This lesson is all about the software that we're going to be using to make our videos. If you think back to the earlier lessons, we talked about the equipment and gear that we need to use to make our videos, and we also looked at how to set up our recording space, the place where we make our videos.

The software is like the final piece of the puzzle. So let's jump into it.

There are our main categories of software that we are talking about:

• Recording

• Editing

• Hosting

• All-in-one.

Let's quickly take a closer look at each of these. First up is Recording.

With a recording software, we're going to be able to capture the raw footage that's going to be used in our final video. If we think back to the first module, the types of videos that we are going to be making as entrepreneurs are videos like demos, tutorials, and online courses.

All of these have a screen recording component and a component where we capture ourselves and what we're saying. So we want something that can record our screen and our camera and our audio.

The key thing is that we want to be able to capture all of this at the same time. This is going to save us a ton of hassle later in the process because we won't have to sync up the camera track, screen track, and audio and make sure they all match.

The software that we want to use should be able to do all of that for us. So we just record everything and then we get our screen camera and audio synced up nicely, ready for us to edit.

So when it comes to Editing, this is where we want a software that can take those recordings that we've made, combine them as a single video, and do two key things.

Fix mistakes easily, and add some style and branding.

Fixing mistakes basically is like removing too many um's and R's, removing the silence at the start of a video or the silence at the end of a video, or any other mistakes. We want to be able to cut that stuff out pretty quickly.

Because we are making videos for our business and the videos play a role in marketing and education for us, we want it to be easy for the people watching the videos to associate it with our company. So we should be able to add some style and some branding to make that possible.

When it comes to video editing software, there's kind of a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you've got professional video editing software like Final Cut or Adobe Premiere.

These tools are incredibly powerful but incredibly complex. For our purposes, where we have quite a narrow scope of the type of video that we want to make and what's involved, it's not the most efficient kind of tool for us to use.

In the middle of the spectrum, you've got more use case-specific software like Camtasia or ScreenFlow. Both of these were video editing software that was designed to edit screen recordings. They now can do much more than just that.

These are less powerful than Final Cut or Adobe Premiere, but more efficient to use for our purposes because they've got some workflows that make more sense for the types of videos we're making and they don't have so many unnecessary features for our purpose.

And then at the far other end, you've got simple online video editing software and there's a ton of different options out there for this.

While some of these can be really powerful and do a lot of things, which in some cases might even rival some of the more professional video editing software, their real advantage is that they simplify a lot of the complexity with specific workflows and templates.

They're particularly good at helping you achieve one particular thing. So if you just want to add fancy subtitles to a video, you'll find online video editing software that makes that process easy.

When it comes to which one is best for us, we go back to our key requirements. We want it, to be easy to fix mistakes and easy to add our style and branding. We're probably going to be in that second half of the spectrum. Between the middle and the bottom end. We want something that's going to be in that space.

Next is Hosting. Where we store the videos that we make.

The most obvious thing is just to store the videos on your computer and your local file system. This is probably the easiest way to access your files but we don't just want to access the files for our own purposes. We're not just trying to watch the videos that we make. We want other people to see these videos like customers, colleagues, and followers.

Storing and hosting our videos online is going to make that process a lot easier.

There's kind of two ways you can host your videos. You've got more traditional file storage software and video-specific hosting tools.

Google Drive or Dropbox are good examples of traditional file storage software.

These are good at storing all sorts of files in a cloud location and it's easy to access and share, but they sort of lack a few video-specific tools. They have quite a basic video player, so if you send that file to someone, they'll be able to watch it online but they might not have a ton of options there.

Then you've got more video-specific hosting tools, things like Wistia or Vimeo.

These will have a lot more features dedicated to hosting and watching videos, but they are a little bit more expensive because they have those extra features, specifically for hosting videos.

But again, the key thing for us is that it's easy to access and easy to share the videos. So I would say any cloud storage solution would be better than a local one, particularly if the cloud storage option also has its own built-in video player.

And lastly, we've got All-in-one.

So there are a few software that can do the recording, editing, and hosting. If we think back to this whole process and all the different tools involved, I would say that this is the tool that you are going to want to be using. A tool that can do all of those in one.

If you think through the course so far, it's been emphasized several times that what we want is to optimize for efficiency. We want to be able to make really good content and then get back to the rest of our job.

We don't want to have to use a specific tool for the recording then another tool for the editing and then another tool for where we're going to store and share our videos. We want something that we can just do all of that in one go because it's going to cut out a lot of hassle.

In the third and final module, where we go through some demos of how to create and edit videos, we are going to be using an all-in-one solution. And that one is called Tella.

I hope this module has given you an overview of the process, but also the various tools that can be involved in the process.

So whether you choose to use something all in one, like Tella, or you want point solutions for each of those steps, at least then you get an overview of the different options that are out there, and you can then start to build out a solution or a set of tools that makes the most sense for you.

I will see you in the next lesson, which is the start of the third and final module where we get to make some videos.